


New Page

by lferion



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Challenge Response, Introspection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-13
Updated: 2008-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:57:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos contemplates a blank page.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Page

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a Sweet Charity fic, but looking again at my buyer's requests, I realized I had conflated the two, and this doesn't exactly fit either of them. I ended up making it a HL50 fic, on prompt #38: New Page.
> 
> Thanks go to JBlum, Temve, and especially to Auberus for beta-ing and enthusiasm.  
> [](http:) My Highlander50 table

The page was empty, waiting for the ravishment of words; the pen, new-filled, erect and ready for the writing, tool seductive to the hand. He had this space and time all to himself. What should he write?

. . .

  
Nothing new under the sun.

Five thousand years is a very long time. Long enough for the stars in the heavens to move. Long enough for rivers and coastlines to shift. Long enough for human language to change utterly. But even after five thousand years people are still people. Having a really long baseline of knowledge only makes that more apparent.

Five thousand years is long enough to see and do the full spectrum of human possibility, more than once. Go anywhere. Do anything. And death being a temporary condition means even the outré and suicidal are well within the realm of experience.

Nothing new under the sun.

And yet, every morning when the sun rose, it was a new day. Every resurrection from sleep, or death, or Quickening taken was a new start.

Everything new under the sun. Every breath, every touch, every act of love. It did not matter how many breaths there had been, how many times flesh met flesh, or affection flourished.

. . .

  
He had been fucked with many substances other than flesh over his long years: stone and wood and bronze, bone, ivory, antler, boiled leather and stitched and stiffened cloth, with glass and ice and molded clay, gold and amber, lead and wax, with plastic, rubber, latex, and other compounds of alchemy and science, with honeyed parsnips and carven fruit.

His body remembered every shape and texture: smooth, rough, soft, slick, fluted, grooved, bumpy, knurled and hard, yielding or insistent, hot, cold, wet, dry, harsh or fine or sticky, things of brutal girth or tickling, teasing slenderness; shapes that changed within him – swelling, shrinking, shifting, pulsing or vibrating, warming and cooling, twisting and stretching and filling; rods and spheres and carven shapes.

He remembered the hands that had plied those geometries: strong, subtle, callused, soft, tender, careless and confident, playful and innocent, vicious, victorious, small and large, gnarled and straight, hesitant, wrathful, righteous, reluctant, fearful and forceful and fierce.

He knew in memory the mouths, the thighs, hips and breasts, pricks and quims and arses, tongues and lips, bellies and buttocks, hair of every length and color, skin of every texture. Such a varied creature, man: so many shapes and sizes, forms and inclinations, every attribute fluid, changeable, astonishing.

He remembered the scents of them, the way dawn or noon or moonlight, torchlight or lamplight or the flash of lightning shaped curves and planes, what eyes and hands and bones might say when mouths were silent. Only dead was flesh indifferent, unspeaking, only clay. But even dust, names remained, and memory.

In memory all those lovers – tormentors – teachers – wives and wif-men – brothers and owners – slaves and strangers and companions chance-met – lived still. Loved still. As he lived, and loved and woke each day anew. As his heart beat, speeding at the sound of that step on the stair, that elusive scent, that soundless, sonorous bell of Presence, or the fleeting touch of those eyes. As his breath quickened and his sex swelled. Life sought life, and oh, he was alive.

That step on the stair, that Presence, that scent. His heart sped anew.

He shut the journal, laying down the pen. The damp breath of air from the new-shut door tickled his bare ankles. He could hear the familiar sounds of coat-hanging, and he leaned back a little deeper in the corner of the chair. Footsteps echoed in the hall, accompanied by the hoppy, yeasty hiss of newly-opened beer. His thighs sprawled wider, and he enjoyed the pulse that bumped in groin and chest. Enough of memory.

His love was here, and now, and ever: always new.

Methos tipped his head back against the cushions, exposing his long throat. A smile welcomed the be-dewed bottle to his hand, and widened as their fingers brushed.

"Duncan."


End file.
